12 Comments

How can I deal with too much blank space in a desktop application?@SchroedingersCat I don't think so. The data I'm presenting will be a cost estimate for government projects worth millions of dollars, so I really have to present the list of associated assumptions right there on the same page. I don't want to risk that, for example, an end user doesn't scroll down, and then gives the figure to someone else, failing to mention that it doesn't take into account additional costs X and Y, or risk Z. If it's all there in front of them and they don't read it, well then at least they can only blame themselves. I think redesigning the locations tab is my best bet.

How can I deal with too much blank space in a desktop application?Laying everything out horizontally is a possibility, I might have to try it and see how it looks. As for the button positioning, I'm not sure. I just felt like the Add should be separate from the Edit and Delete buttons, and because the added thing will appear in the next drop-down below, putting the button below seemed sensible? To be honest, I'm not really happy with the button layout.

Jan2

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How can I deal with too much blank space in a desktop application?I think this is what I'm going to end up doing. You are correct that sites have buildings, which have rooms, creating a tree structure. I think I'll change it so that the data is presented as such, with Add/Remove/Edit buttons at the right, which affect the currently selected node.

Jan2

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How can I deal with too much blank space in a desktop application?@MichaelZuschlag I had definitely thought about using a Previous/Next-style wizard, but to me that makes the user feel as though they're trapped into the sequence too much. I don't know about you, but I'm always apprehensive about clicking Previous buttons in wizards, for fear of losing data I've entered on subsequent tabs. I want the ordering of the tabs to give a clear indication of the flow of the data and how one step influences the next, but to still encourage them to go back and tweak things if the final output (a dollar figure) doesn't match what they had in mind.

Jan2

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How can I deal with too much blank space in a desktop application?@SchroedingersCat Good suggestion. I could perhaps divide the next data input tab into two, but the final 'Summary' tab has a similar space requirement and kind of has to stay as it is. It presents a very high-level summary at its bottom (3 dollar figures), a detailed breakdown at its left, and a list of assumptions/caveats in the data at the right. The data and its inherent assumptions must be on the same page, to cover my arse. I don't want users complaining that they used a dollar figure for some purpose, not realising the assumptions that had gone into calculating it.

How can I deal with too much blank space in a desktop application?I like your suggestions, but I'm not sure they would really work for me. The problem is that there's a definitive flow from one tab to the next. The data is quite hierarchical, and changing data on one tab can have significant consequences for data on the next tab. So each tab kind of represents a discrete stage of the data entry process.